


i'm just like you, you're just like me (well, not totally, but we've got some important stuff in common)

by smolqueernerds



Category: Milo Murphy's Law
Genre: Autism, Autistic Milo Murphy, Autistic Sara Murphy (mentioned), Autistic Vinnie Dakota, Gen, just a boy and his time-traveling uncle bonding over neurodivergence thingz, light sensitivity, non-intense depiction of a meltdown/shutdown, rated T for some profanity excessive italics and the aforementioned meltdown/shutdown
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-05
Updated: 2020-10-05
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:40:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26831554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smolqueernerds/pseuds/smolqueernerds
Summary: When Dakota's light-filtering glasses break, he can't cope, and Milo can't fix the situation in time to prevent disaster - but he can help Dakota ride it out, and they can deepen their friendship by learning new things about each other.
Relationships: Vinnie Dakota & Milo Murphy
Comments: 7
Kudos: 52





	i'm just like you, you're just like me (well, not totally, but we've got some important stuff in common)

It’s just about the very middle of summer when it happens; not the hottest day of the year, but possibly the brightest, the sun gleaming over Jefferson County with the white-hot intensity of...well...a star. They’re out at a new sandwich joint Dakota wants to try - their claim to fame is a mustard so spicy it’s legally classified as a level 3 biohazard - and Milo was the only one who wanted to tag along. Zack, Melissa, and Cavendish all begged off, choosing to stay back at the Murphy place and play cards or watch _Doctor Zone_ reruns or whatever. Psh, their loss. 

Nothing disastrous happens while they’re inside, unless you count _culinary_ disasters, which Dakota does not. But the two of them have only just stepped out the door, Milo sucking on a popsicle he bought to cool the burning of the mustard in his mouth, when Murphy’s Law hits. Out of seemingly nowhere, a baseball comes whizzing through the air and hits the prop sandwich balanced above the door. Fake tomatoes, lettuce leaves, and ham slices come showering down onto them. 

Milo rushes to pull off his backpack and pull out something useful, but the popsicle in his hand slows him down, and the first objects are thudding onto their heads before he can stop them. They’re light, barely heavier than paper-mache, and even as Dakota’s trying to dodge he gives a little mental sigh of relief that he won’t wind up with a concussion this weekend. Busy with that thought, he doesn’t even register it at first when a thick tomato wedge whistles downward to knock his glasses off his nose.

But he notices the crunch when they hit the sidewalk, that unmistakable _yep-something’s-busted_ sound. And he _definitely_ notices when that sunlight hits his eyes, slamming into his corneas with the force of a furious freight train and ringing his head in a staggering halo of pain. For a second, it feels like every nerve on his body lights up.

There’s a sharp sound ringing in Dakota’s ears. It takes him a long second to realize it’s his own pained screech. He wrenches his mouth shut, and his eyes, but his vision’s still lit up with white and the inside of his skull feels like a block of hamburger fresh from the tenderizer. God. He hasn’t felt this in forever. He’d let his guard down so much. Stupid.

“Dakota? Dakota!” Milo’s naturally high-pitched voice is all the more high-pitched now; it’s entered a register Dakota’s never heard from him before. _Fear_ , Dakota thinks faintly, and then _I’m scaring him._ His heart pinches painfully. All the near-death experiences he’s seen Milo go through, and _this_ is what finally fazes the kid? But then, of course it is. He’s always more concerned about other people than he is about himself. 

Dakota screws his eyes shut as tight they’ll go, circles his left wrist with his other hand’s fingers and squeezes hard to ground himself, and concentrates on making words. “I’m fine. Don’t...worry.” The words come out a little faint, but they’re comprehensible.

“What’s wrong? What do you need?”

“Uh.” Dakota considers trying for a full, long sentence, then gives up. “Glasses?”

“Okay! Hold on.” There’s the sound of a zipper, some rustling. What, does the kid have extra pairs of glasses stored in his backpack? Not gonna do much good, unless it’s miraculously Dakota’s exact prescription, but…

Something hard settles over his nose. “How’s that?”

Gingerly, Dakota opens his eyes and sighs in relief as the familiar tinted light seeps in once more. “Good. Thanks.” Already words are a little easier to shape, and the ache in his skull is starting to ebb. With any luck, he might not feel it by tomorrow. Crossing his eyes, he sees a thin strip of duct tape around the bridge, holding the broken halves together; Milo’s handiwork. 

And Milo himself, hovering in front of Dakota like an anxious mother duck, hands flapping at his sides as he looks Dakota up and down. “Can I do anything else? Do you want me to call Cavendish, or a doctor, or the whole hospital, or-”

“Milo!” Dakota’s voice comes out harsher than he means it, and he regrets that, he does, but the flood of sounds coming out of the kid’s mouth is only increasing the pain in his head. “Can we...go somewhere? Quiet,” he tacks on, feeling like he might have forgotten a word or two in there, but whatever.

The kid understands, though, nodding so hard it looks like his head might fly off. “There’s a really nice park nearby, stuff hardly ever explodes or falls out of the sky there! Come on, follow me.” Milo takes Dakota’s hand, or rather his wrist, carefully placing his hand over the fabric of Dakota’s tracksuit without coming into contact with his skin. 

Dakota’s touched by the thoughtfulness. Or, well, he’s _not_ touched, which is precisely what makes him feel touched in the metaphorical sense...whatever. He’s no good at figurative language even when his brain’s operating at a hundred percent. 

Milo pulls him gently forward, and Dakota lets himself be steered down the block, through the gate and down onto a bench in the shade of a tree. It’s just him and Milo there, nobody else around.

He doesn’t think he can manage a real smile right now, or even make direct eye contact, but Dakota looks for a long at the space between Milo’s eyes in a way that he hopes conveys his gratitude. (Milo smiles back at him, so maybe it works - then again, maybe the kid is just incapable of going more than five minutes without smiling, like, physiologically.) 

Then Dakota closes his eyes and sinks into himself, focusing on the sound of his own deep, slow breaths, the comforting pressure of his hands gripping each other. He’s not sure how much time passes, but when he feels really, truly settled enough to open his eyes, Milo is scrolling away on his phone, turned away from Dakota with his feet propped up on the side of the bench. 

Dakota coughs. “Hey, kid. Thanks for waiting on me.”

Milo’s head spins around so fast Dakota’s almost scared he’ll get whiplash. “Dakota! You’re back! Hi.”

 _I didn’t go anywhere_ , Dakota thinks about saying, but shrugs it off; the kid’s not _wrong_ , per se. “Yeah, I’m back.” He coughs awkwardly. “Sorry if that was, like. Weird for you.”

Milo chuckles. “Dakota, I’ve been abducted by aliens! Multiple times! This isn’t even in the top fifty weirdest things that’ve happened to me. This _summer_ .” His smile droops the tiniest bit.”...It was a _little_ bit scary, though. I wasn’t sure if you were okay.”

God, Dakota hates that he made the kid feel like that. “I’m totally okay, Milo. Promise. Thanks to you, especially - you handled that like a champ.”

Milo squints at him, leaning a little closer. “So, um...are your glasses, like, part of you, and you start dying when they come off? Are you a cyborg? It’s okay with me if you’re a cyborg. It’d be super cool, actually. I promise I won’t tell the government!”

Okay, the kid probably should get a full explanation at this point. “I’m not a cyborg. Unfortunately. That would be awesome. But no, I’m just-”

Boy, Dakota’s out of practice with this spiel. His grasp of time is a little fuzzy owing to all the time travel, but it’s safe to say it’s been years since he’s had to explain his brain to anyone, much less a middle schooler. And a middle schooler from the _past_ , shit, did they even use the same words for autism back then? Was this back when it was still named after that Nazi? He probably should have researched this before they started this series of missions, but to be fair, they were never supposed to talk to the locals in that kind of depth. Hah. Well, failed step one (a couple million times over, and over and over).

Best to just start and hope he figures out what he’s saying along the way, right? “So. Um. I’ve got this condition. In my brain. Not even a condition, really, just something about the way my brain works - well, a couple somethings, or one something that has a bunch of different effects, because it can manifest in all these ways, and I’m just one person, it’s different for everybody who has it - anyway, one of the things about it is that my senses are super sensitive to some stuff. Like sunlight. It’s why I have the glasses, to filter it out, because I can’t process it without, like, feeling super nasty.” Dakota knows he’s babbling, but now he’s the one whose mouth won’t stop running on, like now that he’s making words without any problem again he can’t figure out how to stop. “It’s not just light, either, I can’t take it if I’m wearing tight outfits or itchy fabrics for too long, or if I hear certain sounds, like trumpets are evil, one of these days I’m gonna go back in time just to get them uninvented-”

“Wait!” Milo’s eyes get big and round (well, bigger and rounder than usual) as he cuts him off. “Dakota, do you have ASD too?”

Dakota squints. “Do I have…”

“Oh, sorry, that was rude of me to ask, I mean, it’s your business, you don’t have to disclose-”

“No, kid, it’s fine, I just don’t know what that means. Is it, whatchacallit, an acronym?”

“Oh! Yeah. ASD. It stands for ‘Autism Spectrum Disorder.’”

Okay, so they were already saying ‘autism’ by the 21st century. Neat. Dakota’s never heard that acronym before - the ‘disorder’ part doesn’t sound familiar - but hey, pretty close. “Yeah, that’s it. Good guessing, kid.”

Milo beams, hugging his knees close to his chest. “That’s so cool! I’ve never met an adult with it before. Well, not that I knew about, anyway.”

Dakota cracks a smile; Milo’s probably the only person who’s ever responded to his declaration with that kind of positivity _and_ made it sound sincere. “Heh. Yeah, adults have it too. I know sometimes the articles and doctors make it sound like it’s all screaming little snotnosed kids, but-”

“Oh, no, I know,” Milo says, waving a hand like he’s shooing away a fly. “Don’t worry. I never thought that it was, like, going away when I grew up, or anything.”

Dakota starts to nod. Then he stops nodding. Duct tape bumps into the bridge of his nose as he crinkles his brow, trying to figure out what was weird about that last sentence. After a second, he’s pretty sure he’s got it.

“Hang on, what d’you mean, going away when _you_ grew up?”

“Oh!” Milo smacks himself in the side of the head with his palm. “Did I not say? Sorry, I’m always forgetting when other people actually know stuff or if it’s just me that knows it. I’m autistic too.” He says it so casually.

Dakota blinks. “Really?” He winces the second the question falls out of his mouth - here the kid is being so good about it, and now he’s being the jerk who talks like they know your brain better than you do - but it’s already out there.

“Yeah! My sensory stuff isn’t usually that intense,” Milo explains, seemingly unphased by Dakota’s accidental foray into _you-don’t-act-like-it_ territory. “Probably why I didn’t recognize what was happening to you, heh. Sara has more stuff like that - Sara’s autistic too, by the way, she’s fine with people knowing so don’t worry - but mine’s more like, I don’t know. When I try to explain it I feel like I’m pointing to all these different little pieces - like how I can’t tie my shoes, and I need to take the same routes or I get anxious, and I never _ever_ know when people are being sarcastic or not literal-”

“Oh man, same!” Dakota interjects. “That’s half the reason I make so many jokes - keeps people from realizing how many of theirs I miss.”

Milo laughs. “That’s smart!”

“Wait, but you need to take the same routes?” Dakota’s brow creases again. He’s having a field day in the brow-creasing department. “Doesn’t, yanno, Murphy’s Law mess with that? If you need predictability?”

  
“Well, when you think about it, Murphy’s Law is kind of predictable in itself,” Milo muses. “Anyway, it’s not like I need _everything_ to stay the same all the time. That’d be boring! Just some things. Little ones. Like which way I walk. Or my clothes, or the foods I eat. As long I can control those, the rest is okay. Oh, and as long as I have my backpack, obviously.”

“That makes sense,” Dakota agrees. “I’d be totally bored if most things stayed the same all the time.”

Milo extends his little hand for a fist-bump, but then starts, moving to draw it back. “Sorry, I don’t know how you feel about touch, or-”

“Touch is fine outside of sensory overload time, little man,” Dakota assures him, returning the bump dutifully. “Well, touch I start, anyway. Or touch I know is coming. Try not to grab me from behind unless it’s some kind of emergency.”

Milo nods solemnly, eyes drifting up like he’s committing this to memory, and Dakota feels his heart squeeze again. Fertilizer, he really loves this kid sometimes. Okay, maybe all the time.

He should really reciprocate the favor. “Anything I should know not to do with you?”

Milo scrunches up his face, then slowly shakes his head side to side. “Not realllllly?”

“You sure?” Dakota prods, poking lightly at his shoulder. 

Milo giggles. “Nah. You’ve never done anything I didn’t like. Plus, I don’t know, now I know if something ever does happen, you won’t make fun of me.”

“Kid, I wouldn’t make fun of you no matter what,” Dakota reassures him. “And if I ever make a joke you don’t like, punch me. Right in the nose. You have full conditional permission to devastate this beautiful face.”

“I would never,” Milo declares. Dakota thinks it’s going to be followed by one of his earnest declarations about friendship, but instead his smile turns just a little sly. “I wouldn’t want your glasses to get broken again!”

“Okay, okay.” Dakota rolls his eyes and tousles the kid’s hair. “How about we head back to your place and gross out Cavendish and your buddies with stories about how much we ate? Yeah?”

“Yeah!” Milo cheers, his hands waggling in excitement.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in an hour and a half because I didn't want to do my class readings. I am posting it now because I refuse to let myself keep working on it when I still haven't finished my class readings. I haven't written fanfic in years. Blame quarantine emotions, the MML binge that has brought me more joy than any show since PnF ended, and the simple, irrefutable fact that every character in the Dwampyverse is neurodivergent.
> 
> I'm autistic, but I don't have light-related sensory issues and I've never had anything similar to this happen to me, so I sincerely apologize for any inaccuracies; people can feel free to tell me about them and I'll edit them or take the fic down as necessary.
> 
> Things I did not include in this fic but have thought about every day for a week: Dakota being gay or bi, trans, and stupidly in love with Cavendish; Milo being trans and how EHML would intersect with that; ADHD Melissa and anxiety Zack being the best nd support squad with autistic Milo where they all help each other cope; Milo calling Dakota and Cavendish his uncles and both of them tearing up.


End file.
